A portrait of the
artist with all the earmarks, principally understood in his handling of the
material, a living soprano where his fellows draw pictures.

To be sure, Mordaunt Hall of the New York Times
did not quite see the point, nor Variety, nor Pauline Kael of The New
Yorker, nor Halliwell’s Film Guide (“Victorian fantasy
melodrama”).

The Pygmalion anguish is distantly related to
Renoir’s La Chienne. The major analysis is by Kazan in The Last
Tycoon.

John Barrymore plays the role, his eyes turn to
glowing balls while his mind works on his model.

Night
after Night

“A mug tryin’ to be a gentleman.” The
house in reduced circumstances, as Richard Neutra would say (Survival through Design), brought down to
a gangster’s nightspot, and you can spot it by the paint job. The daughter of the place, lovely, lingering, adored by the
mug, he’s taking lessons on the Lausanne Conference and things like that. “Oh, uh, you’re referring to the conference in
Switzerland.”

“Er, quite
so, ha-ha.”

“Yeah, the
pirates of the day are pretty dumb.”

Mordaunt Hall of the New
York Times, “one is apt to admit that it does succeed in being virile
and interesting. Nevertheless, the pivotal idea is one
that would have benefited by a measure of restraint, and so far as one
character is concerned, a truer conception of psychology.” Leonard Maltin, “a crashing bore.” TV Guide, “it’s all very
sleek and snappy”. Time Out, “muddled”. Hal Erickson (All
Movie Guide), “a dreary retread”.Halliwell’s Film Guide, “dim
little drama”.

The Mayor of Hell

The toughest kid
in Peakstown State Reformatory, elected under a new regime of self-government
replacing the Dickensian corruption and misery of the old.

The new deputy
commissioner who institutes these improvements, inspired by the reformatory
nurse, is alas a ward heeler out for “velvet” as a reward for
services rendered in votes and tribute money, “what is above is like what
is below,” the same protection racket practiced by kids “watching
cars” for a quarter on New York streets.

A.D.S. of the New York Times didn’t
understand the nurse, “too sensitive and feminine”, so the film was
for him “an interesting and stimulating drama almost in spite of
itself.”

Successive analyses from Seiler (Crime School)
to Rosenberg (Brubaker) proved no help to Tom Milne (“cloud nine
tosh”, Time Out Film Guide) or Film4 (“preachy and
simplistic”).

The deputy commissioner quits the political machine
for the nurse, who believes a reformatory ought to teach kids “right
things”.

Who killed the
beauty contest promoter? Mason’s indicated, on doctor’s orders. The
winner has a censorious doctor beau, there’s other stiffed dames, the
chairman of the civic betterment board’s her boss and loves her, you see how it goes.

The district attorney loves defense counsel, at least
“I’ve got an option on his services myself, if any crooked
politician ever tries to impeach me,
I’ll be defended in court by Perry Mason,” Manchester’s the
name.

“Here, put this in your mouth.”

“It’s a pencil!”

“Thermometer to you.”

F.S.N. of the New
York Times praised the writers, could not follow the plot
(“nonsensical? Of course!”), wrote “Warren William continues
to be a bit too antic”, and blamed The
Thin Man.

Halliwell’s
Film Guide, “fair”.

Owing to a certain resemblance, this is the
strikingly balanced poetry of a Dali painting with no matter what proceedings
around a calm bicyclist with a loaf of French bread on his head.

Dr. Prangander of The Wild
Goose, that’s Mason, one step ahead of the cops, “too busy with his
practice” (Della Street) to cut the pages of his law books, tel. PLYmouth 1665. Many years later, Jewison incorporated the
detective’s charge in ...and
justice for all.,
a judge there.

The Petrified Forest

The intellectual
dies in the artist, amidst recognizable types such as the old man fond of
outlaws (cp. Night after Night), the
collegiate gridiron hero, the Black Horse Vigilante trooper, and of course the
criminals, with secondary joke material provided by tourists.

Jung and Villon
are the literary preceptors.

Both Variety
and the New York Times (Frank S. Nugent) remarked upon the faithfulness
to the play, Mayo diligently extracts the desert for his exteriors, with some
second-unit footage correlating it to light and wind on the sound stage.

Tom Milne (Time Out Film Guide) could not get
beyond “insufferable literary pretensions”, Halliwell’s
Film Guide agrees, citing Alistair Cooke and Graham Greene.

It’s Love I’m After

The great
Shakespearean actor in the toils of romantic adulation from a female fan is all
a lot of tosh that covers all the bases to get at last to the punchline of a
joke propounded by Shaw, who could see that Englishmen loved the Bard unduly,
for all the wrong reasons, and to death, whereas he is a much more interesting
proposition taken on his own terms, inexhaustible and so forth, with that
variety he assigns to one of his characters.

Nevertheless, and Sir Henry Irving is mentioned, our
player does the noble thing for a pal and plays the cad to put her off, etc.,
etc., she’s a Pasadena heiress, he’s on tour.

She’s absolutely scrumptious, last year it was
Clark Gable ran her ragged in the mind’s eye, the player struts and frets
in vain.

Halliwell thought it was good once upon a time, Variety
at the time found it “fresh, clever, excellently directed and
produced,” Time Out Film Guide again missed the point.

The girl is reconciled to her mate, as Shaw found
Miss Achurch’s Cleopatra “reconciling me to the grave,” the
actor returns to his Juliet, and a lot of bad productions associating themselves
with the playwright are very carefully explained, once and for all.

“What a gigantic reform Mr Poel will make if
his Elizabethan Stage should lead to such a novelty as a theatre to which
people go to see the play instead of to see the cast!”

The Adventures of Marco Polo

The barbarians of
the West are overtaxed by Kublai Khan’s Saracen minister, who sees the
emperor’s army lost on a campaign against Japan and seizes the throne.
Marco Polo advises the barbarians to attack Peking, the Saracen is defeated,
Kublai Khan generous.

A more than
magnificent film guided ultimately by the director’s genius for the
stylistic difficulties in an immense production, which are handled with seeming
lightness and ease.

As often noted, the Venetian merchant leaves China with
noodles, firepowder, a stone that burns, the Princess Kukachin and some trade
agreements.

Variety was receptive to this, moviegoers
reportedly not.

Hugo Friedhofer’s score is continually
inspired.

They Shall Have Music

In Noo Yawk,
Heifetz’ playing sends a “little crook” back to his violin,
only it’s a long way to Carnegie Hall, see? The poor kids at the music
school are facing eviction once the instruments are repossessed, it’s a
calamity dire and extreme (the wee tykes get up to Verdi and Chopin and
Rossini), the crook’s gang swipe Heifetz’ Stradivarius, they
don’t even know what a Stradivarius is, the crook returns it, Heifetz
cancels a concert to fiddle for the folks and be the new sponsor for the school
(he had sent over, gratis, a performance film that delighted the kids), the
creditors are more than delighted.

Such are the
inspiring powers of a great virtuoso, it all seems very possible and makes
perfect sense, why, Halliwell didn’t even realize he was looking at a
work of art, it was so well done. Film4 says it’s
“sentimental”.

The presiding
spirit is Debussy, who as Ken Russell points out lived in poverty a great deal.

Charley’s Aunt

“Oxford
1890”. A don crosses the quad of St. Oldes, accompanied by a short and
even more elderly colleague, they wear cap and gown and great side whiskers
down to the chin, a magnificent walk, one of the great ones.

It sets the tone
for all that follows, the sublimity of which can only be gauged by imagining
the great Arthur Askey in a London movie palace wishing the razor would slip,
in a joshing sort of way, he had played the part for Gainsborough Pictures the
year before (“smiling, the boy fell dead”).

The university,
girls like clouds floating upon it, “Charley’s nut, from Brazil,
where the aunts come from!”

Confirm or Deny

There is an
advantage even to newspapermen in drawing the veil over certain facts for a
time, though it goes against the grain of every journalistic fiber and the
entire thrust of the film.

Consolidated
Press of America is bombed out, moves to the Regency Hotel wine cellar, gets
the scoop on Hitler’s invasion and doesn’t send it. Why let them
know we know?

Every
effort has been made to inform “a thousand papers, ninety million
readers”, only at the last minute to see the story held voluntarily,
however reluctantly, until passed by the Ministry of Information.

Mayo’s
skill and genius paint a picture of the time like Murrow on the scene.

A
very brilliant, profound comedy for some reason entirely dismissed by critics.

Moontide

It all takes
place in the fishing town of San Pablo on one of the inlets of San Francisco Bay.
Gabin is drunk, cadges money in The Red Dot saloon. He talks to a girl, her
escort insults them, Gabin knocks him down, goes on a bender. This is a most
detailed and meticulous evocation of drunkenness, to which Dali contributed
sketches and perhaps the clock with revolving numbers and whiskey-bottle hands,
the entire montage is a polished work of art.

Part of
Mayo’s telegraphic technique is the jump-cut favored by Capra, which
moves the action in closer for inspection then back out. There is another sphere
of activity altogether. This is controlled by the set, which is entirely on a
sound stage, docks, bay, Morro Castle Hotel and all.

Gabin is offered
a job but refuses it. He rescues a girl from suicide by drowning, then bluffs
his way through the police report with aplomb. He takes the girl home to his
dockside shanty.

Gabin is
admirably tough, with a drunken smile now and again. Ida Lupino as the girl is
admirably expressive and sensitive. Gabin’s pals are Tiny (Thomas
Mitchell) and Nutsy (Claude Rains), the latter a Western character in
flat-brimmed Army Stetson, coat and tie with spectacles and mustache.
Gabin’s white blackbilled captain’s hat has the name “Pop
Kelly” written inside it in block letters. Nutsy looks guardedly askance
at that.

A sportboat, the Doris
K., pulls alongside Gabin’s dock with engine trouble, The yachtsman
(Jerome Cowan) is a local doctor, the pinup girl in the stern is rather bored.
Gabin makes repairs.

Mayo’s
consciousness of the image is strikingly revealed in a scene of growing
intimacy between Gabin and Lupino in the shanty. Suddenly Mayo cuts to a
close-up of Tiny filling the screen, then establishes that he is approaching
the dock for a visit. The exterior set is strongly characterized by a stone
jetty in the background, behind which the scud of a crashing wave is seen from
time to time. The point of the set construction may very well be to establish a
very exact congruity between the scud and the occasional smoke from
Gabin’s pipe. The girl leaves smiling.

At night, Gabin
sets out a chair on the dock for her. She sits right, facing him, with
moonlight on the water behind her. He is framed left by the open door behind
his chair facing her, with lamplight to his rear, left. You can learn a lot
from Mayo, not in an academic sense. His setups are informative, his editing is
direct and forceful.

Nutsy burns
Gabin’s hat on a beach fire. The shanty becomes a scene of domesticity.
Mayo’s camerawork is of the best. Gabin bustles into a shot for a brief
comment, the camera jostles in at another angle to settle on him as the
movement is completed. He takes that job on the fishing boat.

Tiny confronts
the girl in the shanty. The scene is composed with the actors jockeying for
position in the shot, the jump-cut, and maneuvering by cutting.

The homage to
Chaplin continues with complicated rhythms within static two-shots (Mitchell
and Rains), etc., on the understanding that cinema is an art of movement.

Everyone gets
gussied up for the wedding on the little dock in front of the shanty. The Doris
K. shows up for more repairs. The gathered throng is pictured with a
long-shot, medium-long, medium-close, two-shot on the couple, long-shot,
medium-shot construction. The bored pinup on the boat shakes Cowan’s hand
and walks off after the wedding. He and Gabin have a long talk over the engine.

Gabin is away
fishing when Tiny accosts the bride in the shanty. There are heated words, he
advances upon her, quick fade to black. Gabin returns, takes her to the
hospital in Cowan’s boat.

Gabin searches
out Tiny, past a giant anchor (silhouette and fog) to the very end of the
jetty, and all but casts him into the sea.

Back at the
hospital, Nutsy lights Gabin’s cigarette, the smoke billows.
Cowan’s boat carries the bride home again, the dock and shanty are transformed
into a seaside cottage.

Orchestra Wives

“This
life’s about as glamorous as a gymnasium!”

The
artists’ life on tour is no clambake, 29 cities in 30 days, as far as the
West Coast, it’s a requirement of the business or no sane man would ever
care to, anyway the wives come along and that’s the story.

They have their
own morale, they keep it up, a delicate thing like circus animals caged for
traveling, a new girl is a prey to every catty bitch and warbler sustaining
herself on dreams and fancies, turning the tables on them tears the band to
pieces, “the best band in the country.”

All can be made
well, however, by a sense of appreciative glad tidings for the level of work
involved, and a dream or two made real a little early.

Glenn Miller and His
Orchestra lightly disguised with a few ringers (George Montgomery, Cesar
Romero, Jackie Gleason) but otherwise intact, Modernaires and all.

The girls are
rather from Cukor’s The Women.

“People
Like You and Me” adds the note of wartime exigency and still puts the
characters in their places, even under extraordinary circumstances of life.

How much if any
of this was admired or even perceived by the New York Times reviewer
(Bosley Crowther) can be stated in two words, “generally fatuous”,
both his.

Halliwell’s
Film Guide and Time Out Film
Guide rate the matter more highly, though Tom Milne could not follow the
plot, “slender” he calls it.

Crash Dive

The joke not
available to reviewers at the time, because the time was not ripe or they
weren’t, is that the young lady is an enemy Q-ship flying Swedish colors,
her base is the school for girls where she works, and the submarine Corsair
has to find this out, furthermore there are two ways to handle it, one involves
not waiting for a promotion, the other goes right into the base.

And so, the
smashing work slipped by the New York Times, where Bosley Crowther asked
if Hollywood knew there was a war on.

The film is
twenty years ahead of its time (Mann’s The Heroes of Telemark) and
exactly contemporary (Asquith’s We Dive at Dawn), centering on the
exquisite portrait of Anne Baxter as femme of the Forties.

Sweet and Low-Down

Material is
visibly reworked from They Shall Have Music and Orchestra Wives
to have a poor kid from the neighborhood hired as a trombonist and take Benny
Goodman’s band away from him, the new band fails.

The surrealism of
the Middleton Military Institute certainly resembles Wilder’s The
Major and the Minor, against Lynn Bari once again as a scheming singer,
this time with a manager (Allyn Joslyn).

It’s the
Dearborn Settlement House, Goodman’s clarinet is swiped to pique his
interest.

All “weak
and weary romance” to Bosley Crowther, New York Times.

The band goes
touring with Goodman, who stops to pick up the trombonist again.

A Night in Casablanca

The furious
complications of plot are savvily put in conversational snatches. This has not
stopped critics from complaining that the exercise of their profession requires
them to think, sometimes.

Nazi
loot ditched by a brave French pilot has been secreted at the Hotel Casablanca.
A Nazi (Sig Rumann) has installed himself as a guest, his staff are waiters,
they’ve killed successive hotel managers to put him in possession.

Ronald
Kornblow (Groucho Marx) is summoned from the Desert View Hotel to take charge.
Rusty (Harpo) and Corbaccio (Chico) eventually become his bodyguards.

The
loot is pictures (Rembrandt), gold, and crown jewels. The Nazi is simply making
an extended stop on his way to South America.

Several
references to Curtiz’ film indicate a situation rather than a spoof.

Angel On My Shoulder

Mayo’s
supreme masterpiece on certain of his themes back to The Petrified Forest
and earlier, running all through his films again and again, in various
permutations expanding and refining the understanding involved, so it’s
especially deplorable that Bosley Crowther of the New York Times should
so easily have confused it with Alexander Hall’s Here Comes Mr. Jordan,
it was all arranged, said Crowther, “in order to suit the convenience of
the commercialists of the screen.”

The
judge, a candidate for governor who runs a youth foundation wiping out juvenile
crime, the devil who opposes him with a lookalike gangster to replace his soul,
the secretary and fiancée who exerts an influence, and so on.

Mayo
puts the gangster wise to Satan and all his works, which is a decided advantage
even in hell.